The model-actress, who lived in London with her partner and musical director David White, had fallen ill just before Christmas and was diagnosed with cancer.

Sophiya Haque in a still from the film 'Snip'

Haque, 41, was born to an English mother and a Bangladeshi father, shot to fame in India during the 1990s during her stint as a video jockey for a couple of popular music channels.

Haque was a popular stage and television actress in Britain. She recently made her mark on prime-time TV as barmaid Poppy Morales on the well-known soap 'Coronation Street' and was in the midst of a West End production called Privates on Parade.

"Sophiya was a wonderful actress, a wonderful client but so much more than that a wonderful friend. She was adored by everyone she worked with and will be deeply missed," said her agent, Oliver Thomson.

He described Haque's relationship with White as "very happy" and the couple were in the process of building a houseboat together when she fell ill.

Haque hit the big league in Britain when she bagged the role of a Bollywood actress in the Andrew Lloyd Webber and AR Rahman musical ‘Bombay Dreams’. This led to a number of plum roles in musicals, including as Janoo Rani in Far Pavilions and most recently as Soraya in Wah! Wah! Girls, described as a good-natured Bollywood musical by critics last year.

In Privates on Parade, which opened in Britain last month, she was praised for her role of Eurasian Sylvia opposite one of Britain's leading stage actors, Simon Russell Beale.

She had acted in Bollywood films like 'The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey', 'Pehli Nazar Ka Pehla Pyaar: Love at First Sight', 'Snip' and some others.

The news of her death stunned the entertainment world and they took the micro-blogging site to express their grief and shock.